One kid was away, three were home. Had another blended family over for a bbq on Friday night for the first time. A lovely time was had by all. We took the girls out fishing in our kayaks on Saturday, that was fun! I find we are lacking in the friend department because a large blended family is a bit of an oddity, but our neighbour knocked on the door and invited us to a deck party on Saturday night. Girls were asleep and teenager boy was watching a movie so given that we were going to be 15 feet from our house we decided to go! It was nice to be with grown ups.

Now, my husband type person (we aren't married) is gone to the field to teach officers to not blow themselves up for yet another week and the two middle kids start soccer this week. It's going to be a busy one. Hoping to not be a yelling, stressed out mess by Friday!

On Friday night, DD1 went to a sleepover at her friends house, so the rest of us had a movie night. DS (10) has been bugging us to let him watch a really scary horror movie. DH & I have had this big debate about whether it'd be harmful or not, whether it'd lead to him wanting to see more violence and gore. Another mom told me that kids usually know their limits and will speak up if something is crossing their line... I thought there is no "Enough." for my kid. Anyway, I decided that Alien might be okay, because at least he could rationalize that it's all in outer space and his bedroom is totally safe if it does scare the crap out of him. After alllll that? He asked us to turn it off shortly after the alien popped out of the guys stomach, in one of the super suspenseful parts. It's good to know he's got that sense about himself.

On Saturday DD1 was back and I cooked a turkey thinking we'd all be home, but as it turned out DH was going out with the guys, so when I was done cooking I just put it all in the fridge for Sunday, and made a pizza for the kids. We played Skip-Bo, Memory, Sorry and Monopoly... pretty much all day. On Sunday, we had family day for real, played more Monopoly (I knocked the bank over with my ass twice) and I had to sanitize all the diapers because DD2 had a yeast rash. We had turkey for supper and I even remembered to light the candle sconces, so it was fancy-shmancy. We let DD2 try turkey, and learned she's still got the tongue thrust reflex.

After supper, DH loaded the dishwasher for me and the neighbour brought over rhubarb from their garden to thank us for a CD of pictures I took a few weeks ago when we found a duck & 10 ducklings in their yarrd & 'herded' them 2 blocks down to the lake. Then we watched an episode of Merlin, which the kids LOVE and then put them to bed.

No idea about this week, I'm just hoping we get some sunny days so I can go for walks with the baby. Sports Day is on Friday and the kids bio-dad is coming... I offered to supervise, so hopefully I don't regret that. I think it'll be okay, though.